BAGHDAD, Iraq – Gunmen waylaid a minibus yesterday carrying foreign technicians to their jobs at a mobile telephone company in western Baghdad, seizing four Egyptians in the second kidnapping of foreigners in the Iraqi capital within a week. A U.S. soldier was killed north of the capital.

Elsewhere, an Iraqi police captain said 22 Iraqi security troops and 14 insurgents were killed last night when rebels tried to storm a police station in a village south of Baghdad. The American command denied the report.

In a telephone interview, Captain Muthana Khalid Ali of the Babil provincial police command said the nighttime attack in Al-Bu Mustafa village, in the Mahawil district, about 50 miles south of Baghdad, began when insurgents in about 10 pickup trucks tried to storm the local police station.

He said the fighting raged for about an hour and five Iraqi national guardsmen and 17 police were killed, as well as 14 insurgents. The insurgents later withdrew, he said.

However, American command spokeswoman Captain Patricia Brewer said no attack occurred, citing provincial authorities. American troops are stationed in the northern part of Babil province. Efforts to contact Captain Ali were unsuccessful and the operations room of the Babil provincial police command was not answering its phone.

Earlier yesterday in the same community, two Iraqi national guardsmen were killed and three were wounded in an ambush, according to the Polish military.

North of the capital, an American soldier from Task Force Baghdad was killed and two others were wounded yesterday in a roadside bombing, the American command said.

Two rockets also exploded near Baghdad International Airport and a third slammed into an Iraqi national guard building in a western suburb. No casualties were reported.

The attacks were the latest sign that insurgents are stepping up attacks against Iraq’s fledgling security forces, which America hopes can assume a greater role in fighting the rebels once a newly elected government takes office.

The violence and kidnappings raise new concerns about security following a brief downturn in violence after the January 30 elections, when Iraqis chose a new National Assembly in the first nationwide balloting since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

A final tally was expected by Thursday, but initial returns point to a landslide by Shiite Muslim candidates endorsed by their clerics. Shiites are believed to comprise about 60% of Iraq’s 26 million people. On the other hand, many Sunni Arabs, estimated at 20% of the population and the core of the insurgency, are believed to have stayed home, either out of fear of rebel reprisal or because of a boycott call by Sunni clerics.

The four Egyptians were seized early yesterday near the Mansour district of western Baghdad, Egyptian and Iraqi officials said. They worked for Iraqna, a subsidiary of the Egyptian firm Orascom Telecommunications, which operates the mobile phone network in Baghdad and central Iraq.

On Friday, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was kidnapped by gunmen who blocked her car outside Baghdad University. Ms. Sgrena, 56, is a veteran reporter for the communist daily Il Manifesto.

Her colleagues appealed yesterday to her captors to free her, citing the journalist’s anti-American stance and saying that holding her would damage the image of Iraq.

A group calling itself the Islamic Jihad Organization claimed Friday to have kidnapped the woman and gave Italy 72 hours to withdraw its troops from Iraq. But it made no threats to kill her or say what would happen if its demands were not met.

Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces are holding a former Saddam Hussein-era army general suspected of financing insurgent bombings and plotting attacks on election targets, Iraqi authorities said yesterday.

Khamis Masin Farhan Ugaydi, 51, was captured December 20 in the town of Beiji, north of Baghdad, officials said in a statement. The statement gave no explanation for the delay in announcing the capture. Mr. Farhan, also known as Abu Sabaa, was a brigadier general under Saddam, the statement said.